Rising Road

A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

Sharon Davies

Similar in sweep and scope to Kevin Boyle's National Book Award winner, Arc of Justice, which also focused on a Northern murder trial

Unique in its focus on anti-Catholic prejudice in the 1920s South and how it complemented the region's strong racial prejudice

Riveting narrative history that uses a romance to explain the South's wrenching transformations in the 1920s

A truly sensational story with all of the ingredients: sex, race, religion, the Klan, a future Supreme Court Justice, and the murder of a priest in broad daylight

Received excellent praise in the Hardcover edition

Rising Road

A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

Sharon Davies

Description

It was among the most notorious criminal cases of its day. On August 11, 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, a Methodist minister named Edwin Stephenson shot and killed a Catholic priest, James Coyle, in broad daylight and in front of numerous witnesses. The killer's motive? The priest had married Stephenson's eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth to Pedro Gussman, a Puerto Rican migrant and practicing Catholic.

Sharon Davies's Rising Road resurrects the murder of Father Coyle and the trial of his killer. As Davies reveals with novelistic richness, Stephenson's crime laid bare the most potent bigotries of the age: a hatred not only of blacks, but of Catholics and "foreigners" as well. In one of the case's most unexpected turns, the minister hired future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to lead his defense. Though regarded later in life as a civil rights champion, in 1921 Black was just months away from donning the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, the secret order that financed Stephenson's defense. Entering a plea of temporary insanity, Black defended the minister on claims that the Catholics had robbed Ruth away from her true Protestant faith, and that her Puerto Rican husband was actually black.

Placing the story in social and historical context, Davies brings this heinous crime and its aftermath back to life, in a brilliant and engrossing examination of the wages of prejudice and a trial that shook the nation at the height of Jim Crow.

"Davies takes us deep into the dark heart of the Jim Crow South, where she uncovers a searing story of love, faith, bigotry and violence. Rising Road is a history so powerful, so compelling it stays with you long after you've finished its final page."—Kevin Boyle, author of the National Book Award-winning Arc of Justice

"This gripping history...has all the makings of a Hollywood movie. Drama aside, Rising Road also happens to be a fine work of history." —History NewsNetwork

Rising Road

A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

Sharon Davies

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The Best Laid Plans 2. A Parish to Run 3. Until Death Do Us Part 4. A City Reacts 5. A Killer Speaks 6. The Building of a Defense 7. The Engines of Justice Turn 8. Black Robes, White Robes 9. Trials and Tribulations 10. A Jury's Verdict Epilogue

Rising Road

A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

Sharon Davies

Author Information

Sharon Davies, John C. Elam/Vorys Sater Designated Professor of Law, Ohio State University

Sharon Davies is the John C. Elam/Vorys Sater Professor of Law at the Ohio State University.

Rising Road

A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America

Sharon Davies

Reviews and Awards

"A wonderful reconstruction of an illuminating piece of American legal history. It should appeal not only to scholars of race, gender, and religion in the Jim Crow south but also to anyone who enjoys a dramatic legal yarn." - The Journal of Southern History

"First-rate history. Detailed yet fast-paced, it lays bare the common, deep-rooted bigotry of a region and era that made the jury verdict predictable. Davies' fascinating book is an excellent work of narrative history. Rising Road deserves a wide audience." - Columbus Dispatch

"An illustrative tale about its time, well worth the telling." - Publishers Weekly

"In this exquisite book, Sharon Davies takes us deep into the dark heart of the Jim Crow South, where she uncovers a searing story of love, faith, bigotry and violence. Rising Road is a history so powerful, so compelling it stays with you long after you've finished its final page." - Kevin Boyle, author of the National Book Award-winning Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age

"A deep knowledge of Southern and legal history, and of the dramatic give-and-take of criminal trials, allows this compelling human story of religion, race and murder to show how the barbarities of 1920s Alabama had played out in families, courts and politics." - David Roediger, Professor of History at University of Illinois and author of How Race Survived U.S. History

"Sharon Davies skillfully traces how an open-and-shut case unraveled. That the outcome seemed foreordained did not inhibit Davies from writing a gripping trial history." - Christian Century "

"...capture[s] in rich detail the irrational and complex interplay among race, religion, and "otherness" in the post-World War I Jim Crow South." - The Journal of Southern Religion